George W. Bush Haunts Mitt Romney

In fact, that’s Romney’s biggest problem. It’s George W.
Bush, not Barack Obama, who has made voters skeptical of many of
Romney’s core policies. It’s George W. Bush, not Obama campaign
strategist David Plouffe, who persuaded voters that our economic
troubles aren’t mainly Obama’s fault. And so it is, in a sense,
the electorate’s lingering fear of George W. Bush, as much as
its residual affection for Barack Obama, that Romney needs to
beat if he’s to become president.

At Tuesday’s debate, Romney was given a chance to do just
that. A voter from Nassau County stood up and asked: “Governor
Romney, I am an undecided voter, because I’m disappointed with
the lack of progress I’ve seen in the last four years. However,
I do attribute much of America’s economic and international
problems to the failings and missteps of the Bush
administration. Since both you and President Bush are
Republicans, I fear a return to the policies of those years
should you win this election. What is the biggest difference
between you and George W. Bush, and how do you differentiate
yourself from George W. Bush?”

Slow Pitch

That’s a slow pitch right over the middle of the plate.
Romney should’ve been prepared to crush it. In fact, he
should’ve been hoping against hope that someone would ask
exactly that question.

But Romney didn’t crush it. Astonishingly, his first
instinct was to ignore it.

“Thank you,” Romney said. “And I appreciate that
question.” But his mind was still on the previous question. “I
just want to make sure that, I think I was supposed to get that
last answer,” he complained to moderator Candy Crowley.

This was one of Romney’s oddest tics, arguing endlessly and
unhappily over the rules of debate. At times, it seemed he was
running for parliamentarian rather than president. Crowley, with
an exasperated look, assured him he could use the time he’d been
allotted to separate himself from George W. Bush however he
wanted. “Go ahead and use this two minutes any way you’d like
to,” Crowley said, “the question is on the floor.”

Romney devoted the first bit of his answer to the previous
question about contraception. Only later did he turn to address
the central question about his candidacy: “Let me come back and
answer your question,” he said. “President Bush and I are --
are different people and these are different times and that’s
why my five-point plan is so different than what he would have
done.”

Notice what he didn’t say there. He didn’t say that Bush
had gotten anything wrong before leaving office as one of the
most unpopular presidents in history. He didn’t say, “You’re
right to be skeptical of Republicans, because we didn’t live up
to your expectations last time.” He said, rather, “Have you
heard about my five-point plan?”

Romney’s right about one thing: These are different times
than when Bush ran for president. But that’s why his five-point
plan is so depressing. It’s not just that there’s nothing in it
that Bush wouldn’t have endorsed in 2000. It’s that most of it
actually would have made more sense in 2000.

Take Romney’s tax cuts. When Bush was proposing tax cuts
without any offsets, the budget was in surplus and tax receipts
were at record highs. The policy made some sense. Romney’s tax
cuts come at a time of enormous deficits and record-low
receipts. It’s a different time, but Romney’s policy is the
same.

Cracking Down

“I’ll crack down on China,” Romney promised. But China’s
currency manipulation has calmed. As Obama noted in the debate,
China’s currency has appreciated significantly. Moreover, as
Chinese wages rise and they fight for more high-skilled jobs,
the threat from China becomes less about currency manipulation
and more about competitiveness. Perhaps we could’ve kept some
jobs by cracking down on China in 2000. In 2012, it’s more like
locking the barn after the horses have run off.

Romney promised that he would enter office with “a very
robust policy to get all that energy in North America -- become
energy secure.” The idea that this is different from Bush is
laughable; Romney sounds just like him, promising to intensify
the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. “Let me put this
plainly,” Bush said in 2000. “Oil consumption is increasing.
Our production is dropping. Our imports of foreign oil are
skyrocketing. And this administration has failed to act.” And
tell me you can’t imagine this Bush line coming from Romney
today: “My opponent says he is for natural gas -- he just
doesn’t like people to find it or move it.”

“I’m going to get us to a balanced budget,” Romney said.
So did Bush. He endorsed amending the Constitution to require a
balanced budget. But, like Romney, he was specific about his tax
cuts and increases in military spending, but vague about his
spending cuts. The result was much higher deficits.

Romney’s final point of differentiation from Bush was
“championing small business.” Specifically, he promised to
keep their taxes low and deregulate them. These aren’t exactly
priorities Bush opposed. Romney then segued to his promise to
repeal Obama’s health-care reform, which, again, was no contrast
with Bush.

Salient Agreements

So let’s go to the scoreboard: Romney offered precisely
nothing that Bush wouldn’t have proposed in 2000. And Romney
left out some of his more salient agreements with Bush. For
instance, both the Enron debacle and the financial crisis
happened on Bush’s watch. As a result, Congress passed the
Sarbanes-Oxley and, later, Dodd-Frank laws to toughen financial
regulation. But Romney has proposed rolling back both.

It fell to Obama to point out some disagreements between
Bush and Romney. “You know, there are some things where
Governor Romney is different from George Bush,” the president
said. “George Bush didn’t propose turning Medicare into a
voucher.”

Even that’s not true. On page 233 of “Renewing America’s
Purpose,” Bush’s 2000 policy platform, Bush expresses his
support for the recommendations of the National Bipartisan
Commission on the Future of Medicare, and in particular, their
“reform plan modeled after the Federal Employees Health Benefit
Program.” That was a premium support, or voucher, plan.

2012 is not 2000. We have deficits rather than a balanced
budget. We have historically high unemployment rather than
historically low unemployment. We’ve seen what the financial
system can do when left unchecked. We’ve watched tax cuts in
2001 and 2003 fail to spark economic growth and seen a rising
stock market fail to lift middle-class wages. We do need new
thinking. But Romney isn’t offering any. His problem isn’t that
the public is unfairly judging him by Bush’s policies. It’s that
they’re fairly judging him by Bush’s policies.

(Ezra Klein is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions
expressed are his own.)